"The Gods Must Be Crazy" is a very entertaining and educational film about the Kung Bushmen, an African tribe from the Kalahare Desert in Botswana in southern Africa. The film cleverly contrasts their lives to those of "civilized men".

The movie involves three subplots which come together by the end. The main plot involves a tribe of Kung Bushmen, who one day discover a Coke bottle, which had been dropped from a plane. Not knowing what it is, the tribe discover several uses for "the thing". They end up fighting over it, whence they decide that it is evil. Xi (N!Xau), a young member of the tribe, decides to throw it off the edge of the earth.

A second plot involves a bumbling microbiologist, who‘s asked to drive a dilapidated truck to meet a new schoolteacher. He‘s very uncomfortable around women and ends up making a fool of himself repeatedly around her.

The third plot involves a gang of political terrorists, who attempt to assassinate the president of their country in central Africa. They end up killing three member of the cabinet and fleeing to Botswana.

Eventually Xi encounters the microbiologist and his friend as well as the schoolteacher. He thinks they‘re gods at first and tries to return the Coke bottle to them, but they won‘t take it. Xi gets in trouble when he kills a goat with a bow and arrow without realizing the goat was the property of a boy. The police arrest him and sentence him to three months in jail, but the microbiologist and his friend manage to get him released into their custody.

One day, the gang of terrorists, while being pursued, end up kidnapping the class of the schoolteacher. The leader of the gang makes them march through the desert, signalling for the delivery of food every 20 miles. Eventually Xi spots the children and the biologist devises a clever plan to free them from the terrorists. He asks Xi to sting them with small pellets filled with a tranquilizing agent, which makes them fall asleep. He then rounds them up, including two Xi had missed because they were hiding in the bushes playing cards.

Having freed the hostages, Xi is allowed to leave. Eventually he comes to a big cliff with a thick layer of clouds below, which looks to him like the edge of the earth, and throws the bottle off.